"Come over to 481," says JoAnn Sorrenti, the owner of Sierra Nut House in Fresno. "It's the best booth here."

At the Winter Fancy Food Show last week, it was almost too noisy to hear Sorrenti's voice on the phone. Reaching her in person required weaving through crowds.

It was worth the effort. Nibbling around Booth 481 with Sorrenti and her sister, Diane Rosetti of Rosetti's Fine Foods in Clovis, confirmed that this booth was a jackpot. The Cheeseworks, an importer and distributor of fine foods, had gathered an impressive display of cheeses, meats, olive oils, chutneys, spreads and breads.

There were sweet onion and creme fraiche sourdough flatbread from Rustic Bakery in Larkspur. There were Rocchetta, a complex cheese made from goat, sheep and cow milks from Caseificio dell'Alta Langa in Italy. There were the mortadella, soppressata and salametto from Fra'Mani, the Italian specialty meat company in Berkeley.

All of it tasted incredible.

This show, a three-day culinary orgy in San Francisco's Moscone Center, was a lot of things to a lot of people. About 16,000 buyers roamed the aisles, where 1,100 companies pitched their wares, says Ron Tanner, a vice president of the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade. The association organizes this sprawling event every year, as well as the annual Spring Fancy Food Show in Chicago and the Summer Fancy Food Show in New York.

The winter and summer events are the major ones, and the jockeying always is the same. Upstarts hope their products will be the next hot things. Older companies come to schmooze with their customers, since skipping the show lets competitors woo away business. All vendors pick booths to maximize their foot traffic, even if it means being next to the bathrooms.

When faced with such a dizzying array of buying and selling, it's hard to make sense of it all. Tanner offered up some of the trends to watch: organic products, healthy foods, retro items such as bundt cakes and regional products with indigenous flavors.

Natural and organic foods definitely were popular, with Vignette Wine Country Soda as a prime example. Folks came back for seconds and thirds of the Berkeley company's two offerings: pinot noir and chardonnay. Buyers for various Whole Foods stores jammed the table. Retailer after retailer asked whether Vignette sold its bottles on the East Coast.

Vignette doesn't yet ship there, says company founder Patrick Galvin, who came to the show in hopes of finding a distributor. Impatient customers can buy it at hellodelicious.com, he adds.

This isn't your children's grape soda. Made with 56% grape juice and free of preservatives, corn syrup and sugar, these sodas highlighted the varietals with complex flavors.

"The pinot's got a very fruity flavor," Galvin says. "The chardonnay is nice and soft."

Jackie Korell, an owner of Katama General Store and catering company Lobster Tales in Martha's Vineyard, Mass., was disappointed to learn that Galvin didn't have East Coast distribution.

"It's terrific," she says. "I'm bummed."

Korell regularly attends the Winter Fancy Food Show to look for California vendors that create fresh and artisanal food.

"When we come to this show, we go home so excited," she says. "We just get jazzed off the energy of the small producers."

Various meat companies are also riding the trend of natural products. Busseto Foods, an Italian specialty meat maker in Fresno, promoted Busseto Naturale cured products made with hormone-free meat from Niman Ranch. "No Nitrites or Nitrates added," states the label on Busseto's dry salami.

La Quercia, a company in Norwalk, Iowa, served samples of its buttery prosciutto made from nitrates-and-nitrites-free, antibiotic-free, humanely raised pork.

Fra'Mani, launched by Paul Bertolli, the renowned former chef of Oliveto in Oakland, uses meat from hogs that "are never given antibiotics, artificial growth hormones, growth-promoting agents or meat by-products," states www.framani.com, the company's Web site.

(Expect to see Vignette Wine Country Soda and Fra'Mani meats in Fresno. Sorrenti is working on stocking Sierra Nut House with their products.)

As for regional foods, you'll likely see more Australian ones in the central San Joaquin Valley. The Australian Trade Commission recently hired a district manager in Fresno to pitch Australian items, says Angela Lowrey, a communications manager for the Australian Trade Commission.

Since Australia and the United States entered a free-trade agreement in 2005, demand for Australian cheeses, olive oils and foods with indigenous flavors has skyrocketed.

"There's a rapid increase in interest for Australian products, especially the native herbs," Lowrey says.

At the Winter Fancy Food Show, more than 100 Australian products were jammed into a couple of aisles. The bright, citrusy lemon myrtle flavored Hickory Run's olive oil, leaving a lingering, lemony taste. Bush tomato, a fruit known for its tomatolike flavor, was prominent in Outback Spirit's array of products. There were bush tomato ketchup, bush tomato and balsamic salad dressing, bush tomato chutney, and a spice blend of bush tomato and Parmesan.

Lots of companies showed off foods that weren't as trendy as these items, but they still found the show valuable because of timing or niche markets.

Valley Lahvosh Baking Co. of Fresno introduced new packaging for its heart-shaped cracker bread -- just in time for Valentine's Day. San Joaquin Valley Farms of Fresno introduced snack packs of nuts with interesting flavors: chili lime, chili lemon and adobo salsa.

And Elegant Gourmet, a Woodinville, Wash., company that still pulls candy by hand, had Christmas on display. Instead of candy canes, hard-candy wreaths hung from Christmas trees. Or the candy was shaped into trees themselves. A new line, marshmallow-flavored hard candy with pink, lime green and white colors, is for Christmas 2007, company founder Louisa Davis says.

Lots of retailers and brokers already were looking for holiday ideas.

"They're determining my sales volume for the next year," she says. "To us, [the Winter Fancy Food Show] is that important."

There are other reasons why companies attend this show. Tami Garry of Garry's Dried Fruit and Nuts in Del Rey pointed out that her corner booth by the bathrooms had lots of visibility. She and husband James Garry made a point of picking a booth away from competitors.

"If you're not here, you don't know who you'll see," Tami Garry says. "A lot of it is about PR, keeping your name out there."

Valley Fig Growers in Fresno lured customers with a chocolate fountain and dried figs. Its new item, a softened form of fig paste for small food manufacturers, wasn't exactly exciting to the average buyer.

"We typically don't sell or take orders at the show," says Gary Jue, the company's vice president of industrial sales. "This is an idea generator for people who use figs. ... For us, [the show] is more an educational format, but we do stimulate a lot of ideas for new-product development. In the future, we'll write business, but sometimes it can be four months to three years."